A blade assembly for cleaning a windshield of a vehicle is an active safety device as well as a device that provides user convenience, which is installed to ensure a driver's view by removing foreign substances or rain drops on a glass surface of the windshield.
Generally, the blade assembly for cleaning the windshield of the vehicle includes a wiper strip that slides on and contacts the windshield and has rubber elasticity, a vertebra that elastically supports the wiper strip, and a retainer and a coupling device as a coupling assembly for firmly fixing the wiper strip to a wiper arm. Generally, the retainer has a tournament structure, so as to accommodate a deviation in contact between the wiper strip and the windshield, according to a difference in curvature of the windshield between the wiper strip and the retainer. The tournament structure may include a space between the wiper strip and the retainer. Recently, as roads have been improved for high-speed driving and the performance of a vehicle has been enhanced, a problem of an existing blade assembly to clean the windshield has been raised. That is, when a wiper apparatus operates while a vehicle is moving at a high speed of 160 km or more, a lift may be exerted on the blade assembly, and the blade assembly may not properly contact the windshield. Thus, the wiper apparatus may not properly wipe the windshield. In order to solve such a limitation, there is a need to develop a new blade assembly for cleaning the windshield that does not include a retainer structure.
Recently, a wiper apparatus, referred to as a “flat-blade type wiper apparatus”, has drawn attention for preventing floating of a wiper while a vehicle is moving at a high speed. In the case of the flat-blade type wiper apparatus, a vertebra that supports a wiper lip is configured with a spoiler-integrated lever, and a connector device for connecting a wiper arm to the wiper apparatus is disposed at a center of the vertebra. Korean Patent Publication No. 2011-0116521 discloses an example of the flat-blade type wiper apparatus.
However, a wiper blade apparatus according to the related art has a configuration in which a connector device for connecting a wiper arm to a blade is coupled to a vertebra, which includes a plurality of caulking or bending processes that are inconvenient for assembling. Therefore, the connector device coupled to the vertebra is difficult to physically separate from the vertebra. Thus, it is inconvenient because it is difficult to separate the connector device when the connector device needs to be replaced while the wiper apparatus is used. In addition, when the connector device malfunctions, a user needs to replace the entire wiper apparatus, thus spending more on replacement of parts. Furthermore, the connector device according to the prior art requires caulking or bending operations during assembling, causing a deterioration in assemblability.